The best TV viewing Stanley
Cup game in 36 years went to a team that hasn't won the championship in 49 years.
The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup over the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday night. Their last
cup was in 1961. For the entire series, the NHL has seen its best Stanley Cup television ratings finale in eight years.
Even then, overall TV ratings for NBC on Wednesday, which ran the game,
couldn't beat Fox -- at least according to early results. Fox won the night among 18-49 viewers.
Fox ran two hours worth of its summer dance show "So You Think You Can Dance?" That toe-tapper
won a 3.0 rating/10 share among 18-49 viewers. For the three-hour game -- 8:15 to 11:15 p.m. -- NBC hockey took in a 2.9/10.
Looking at the more broad viewer metric of TV households, NBC
recorded a Nielsen preliminary 5.8/10 household rating, its best result since 1974 game six, which recorded a 7.6/27 and featured the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers.
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Game six was also
21% higher in ratings than game six of the 2009 Stanley Cup, which featured the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins.
Wednesday night was a virtual two-show race featuring "Dance" and the
NHL Stanley Cup. Every other network programmed repeats, except for ABC's playing the lowly drama "Happy Town," which took in an almost invisible 0.8 rating/3 share at 10 p.m.
"Town" and CBS'
repeat of "CSI:NY (1.8/5) went into the teeth of the last part of the game, which featured a sudden-death playoff goal. During the last half-hour, the NHL game shot to a big 3.9 rating/12 share among
18-49 viewers.
For the night overall among 18-49 viewers, Fox, in prelims, has beaten NBC with one-tenth of a rating point win, 3.0/9 to NBC's 2.9/9. That may change, depending on final
results. CBS was next at a 1.7/5; Univision, 1.5/4; ABC, 1.2/3; and CW, 0.5/2.